Dark Sounds: Poetry & Flamenco ft. Jan Zwicky

Poets Garth Martens and Jan Zwicky will perform alongside two of Canada’s top flamenco artists, guitarist Gareth Owen and dancer Denise Yeo on November 7, 8, and 9, at Intrepid Theatre.

Each performance is followed by an on-stage interview and conversation. The interviewer for the 2024 post-performance on-stage interviews will be writer and therapist Melanie Siebert.

This is an intimate show of 45 seats. Mask-wearing is required for attendance (we will provide masks if you forget yours). Advanced on-line sales only. Doors at 6:30 p.m. Show at 7:00 p.m.

DARK SOUNDS is a flamenco literary series that joins English-language poetry with traditional flamenco. Our focus is the dark core of sex, family, and love. What we’ve lost, what we’re about to lose. Grief, endings, disappearances. The climate crisis. Personal sorrows that pile up while, all around us, smoke steeples the horizon. Yes, the dark core of being human, of belonging to this species. No hope of rescue.

We’re creating a new experience—fusing North American speech with the intensity of flamenco to offer urgent truth-telling about our cultural and planetary situation.

In traditional flamenco, dancer and guitarist improvise in response to Spanish-language singers, and one another, with no two performances the same. In DARK SOUNDS, they respond to English-language spoken-word performers. Answer the force of language with their own rupturing energies. Embody something like fire or wind with their precision, rhythm and silence. The ugly faces we’re taught to hide are uncovered, tied to what’s true and uncomfortable, hard to bear. Anger, despair, our culpability, our ferociousness. Our full sob. Our rage. Our love, too—the invocation of our attention. In true flamenco form, we’re asked to listen with our entire being before we improvise.

In his first book, , a finalist for a Governor General’s Award for Poetry, Garth Martens tackled the tar sands and industrial projects of Alberta with philosophical and psychological depth. Of that work, poet A.F. Moritz said: “His is poetry that embraces the harshest facts, then spirals through meditation and lyricism to a vision of our world from the towers of Troy to the towers of the oil derricks... An exceptional book.”

For DARK SOUNDS, Martens will read from new, unpublished poems that concern childhood trauma and a northern Alberta dreamed and, imperfectly, remembered. He will also read poems informed by a 14-year study of flamenco and an arts residency in Granada.

Guitarist Gareth Owen and dancer Denise Yeo are among the top flamenco artists in Canada. They’ve performed across Canada, the US, and Spain, and teach at Flamenco Victoria. They are members of Alma de Espana Flamenco Dance Company and Palabra Flamenco. With the return of DARK SOUNDS, guitarist Gareth Owen and dancer Denise Yeo affirm their reputations for responsive, highly sensitive interpretations of English-language poetry.

The Griffin Poetry Prize jury described Jan Zwicky’s work as “an extended set of variations on the theme of listening”, noting that “risky” issues of love and death take central place. “The payoff is real and extraordinary,” the judges continue. “Her unashamedly lyric verse always feels earned by, and earthed in, lived experience: whether of grief or companionship.” She writes of a world that is both exquisitely beautiful and ceaselessly changing: brilliant, flashing, and falling away.

For DARK SOUNDS, Zwicky will read from her latest collection, , a book steeped in the pregnant silence of the living world, and , poems that speak out of antiquity to address intensely contemporary concerns.

“At its heart, DARK SOUNDS, a vibrant, cross-disciplinary experience, engenders community in a time of ecological, cultural, and personal crisis. Garth Martens' poetry was so in touch with flamenco I could hardly breathe. The last time I witnessed a poet recite their work, as he did, was when I listened to Gwen MacEwan. My congratulations to all performers for their excellence: Denise Yeo (literally) grounded and grounding; Gareth Owen utterly present to the shifting shapes; and Jan Zwicky with her terror-full, beautiful poems.”

—Marilyn Bowering, poet, novelist, and non-fiction writer

“There's virtuosity to burn in this hour of dance, music, and poetry. I know next to nothing about flamenco traditions, but the sensual pleasures of this show are many: Denise Yeo’s dancing, by turns sinuous and ferocious… the rich voice of Garth Martens, and his fleeting images… guitarist Gareth Owen [playing] like he has a hundred fingers… Let it wash over you.”

—The Georgia Straight

“I don't know how to describe what it is that they do. It's like they harness gravity, and you don't know if you're floating or sinking as you watch them. After I saw them perform for the first time, I wanted to tell them how much I loved the show, and the only honest thing I could do was to shake my head and swear.... I promise you beauty and intensity and artistry of the highest calibre.”

—Anne-Marie Turza, author of The Quiet and Fugue With Bedbug

“WOW .... This unique marriage of talents creates an incredible experience… Powerful and primal exaltations of people who refuse to be cowed.”

—Janis La Couvée, theatre reviewer for the Victoria Fringe Festival

“Equal-parts passionate and desolate … guaranteed to captivate…”

—Showbill Canada

“Few poets, now or in history, are as good as Jan Zwicky."

—A.F. Moritz, poet

“Passionate intelligence...”

—Ellipse Magazine

“Poems of exquisite lyric grace and deep feeling.”

—Toronto Star

"The Long Walk carries a lifetime's force of meaning. A deeply beautiful book.”

—Anne Michaels, author of Fugitive Pieces

“There’s a reasonable chance that people will be reading [Zwicky’s] work a century from now. This is something that one says of only a very small number of philosophers.”

—Dr. James Young, Chair, Dept. of Philosphy, University of Victoria

“[In Learning to Die: Wisdom in the Age of Climate Crisis, co-authors Jan Zwicky and Robert Bringhurst] offer a kind of piercing wisdom-literature for our time, generous insight for an age of ecological calamity... I can feel it altering my own way in the world.”

—David Abram, author of The Spell of the Sensuous and Becoming Animal

“The project of Learning to Die is simple, but harrowing. Bringhurst and Zwicky ponder an all-but-unthinkable question: how should we live in the end times? They don’t discount our attempts to stave off environmental catastrophe. But they believe, on the evidence, that it’s too little too late. And they go on to ask, How should we face our coming fate? Can we learn, as members of a species run amok, how to perish with a modicum of responsibility and grace? These are artist-thinkers of commanding stature, and the specific answers they give deserve our attention. But what makes Learning to Die indispensable goes even deeper: the example it sets of unblinking courage. It opens a space for human beings to reckon with ultimate things.”

—Dennis Lee, poet

“Guides us towards ways to live and know the situation of climate change.”

—Annie Proulx, The Guardian

We respectfully acknowledge that we are on unceded First Nations territory. The City of Victoria and surrounding areas lie on the territories of the Coast Salish and Lekwungen-speaking peoples, including the Esquimalt, Songhees, and W̱SÁNEĆ First Nations. We are settlers on this land.

Garth Martens is the author of and the chapbook . For his poetry, he was a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award and won the Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. His work appears in Dark Mountain Project, Poetry Ireland, , This Magazine, Vallum, Fiddlehead, Grain, Prism, and Best Canadian Poetry. He is a former member of the editorial boards for The Malahat Review and Arc Poetry Magazine, and former coordinator for Open Word: Readings & Ideas.

In 2017, he co-founded Palabra Flamenco as its producer and principal poet. For Alma de España Flamenco Dance Company, he performed his poetry in Pasajes, an international production.

Gareth Owen began his career with his father, renowned flamenco guitarist, the late Harry Owen. He has since shared the stage with over a dozen of the world’s most renowned flamenco artists including Javier Latorre, Maria Bermudez, and Coral de los Reyes. His Canadian collaborators include Oscar Nieto, Kasandra Lea “La China”, Gerardo Alcalá, and Carmen Romero. Performance venues include Jerez de la Frontera, Spain, as well as Toronto, Calgary, Winnipeg, Vancouver, Victoria, and Dawson City.

Owen frequently collaborates with his mother, nationally acclaimed dancer and choreographer, Veronica Maguire. He lives with his wife, dancer Denise Yeo, in Victoria, BC, where he is the principal guitarist for Palabra Flamenco, and teaches at Flamenco Victoria, a school for flamenco dance, guitar, song, and rhythm.

Owen has recorded two albums, and , also available on Spotify and Deezer.

Denise Yeo is a professional flamenco dance soloist and palmera. Yeo performs in tablaos across Canada and in large-scale productions such as Alma de España Flamenco Dance Company's Recuerdos and Pasajes and Pacific Opera’s Ainadamar. In 2017, she co-founded Palabra Flamenco, a literary and flamenco ensemble, as its artistic director and principal dancer. As such, she has toured flamenco, literary and fringe festivals across Canada, performing La Palabra en el Tiempo and Fox Woman. Their Dark Sounds series remains one of her favourite collaborations to date.

She lives in Victoria, BC, where she teaches at Flamenco Victoria, a school for flamenco dance, guitar, song, and rhythm.

Jan Zwicky is one of Canada’s most respected artists and intellectuals, known equally for her highly original work in philosophy and her lyric poetry. She has published over twenty books of poetry, nonfiction, fiction, and translation including , , and . With Robert Bringhurst, she is the author of . Her many honours include the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry and the Order of Canada. She is also a violinist, with a strong interest in baroque performance practice.

Host or Publisher Palabra Flamenco